Preparation

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Transcript

Transcript:

David Attenborough: (whispering) What bird has the most elaborate, the most complex, the most beautiful song in the world? And I guess there are lots of contenders but this bird must be one of them. The superb lyre bird of Southern Australia. He clears a space in the forest to serve as his concert platform. To persuade females that come close and admire his plumes, he sings the most complex songs he can imagine, and he does that by copying the songs of all the other birds he hears around him such as the kookaburra. It’s a very convincing impersonation. Even the original is fooled. He can imitate the calls of at least twenty different species. He also, in his attempt to outsing his rivals, incorporates other sounds that he hears in the forest. That was a camera shutter! … and again! … and now a camera with a motor drive ... and that’s a car alarm … and now the sounds of foresters and their chainsaws working nearby.

Yes, they are absolutely stunning and interesting. Speaking about birds in my country, Sri Lanka, we have both native and migratory birds and the number of species is quite high, so its hard to select a common bird out of them.